Dallas City News

In case you missed it, the 2024 Dallas Cowboys schedule was released on Wednesday.

There are likely things that stood out to you and to your friend who is also reading along. Personally speaking I could not get past the fact that the Cowboys have multiple games on both a Monday and a Thursday.

At first glance this felt like something that was rare because of each individual element, but upon some inspection it is not that rare to have multiple Monday or multiple Thursday games in a single season.

But both? In the same season? That is a bit of a different story.

We have seen the Cowboys play multiple Thursday night games a lot over the last decade as the NFL has generally lined one up for the Thursday following Thanksgiving Day so that Dallas (and their TNF opponent) has a full seven days of rest to prepare. So be it.

In 2022 we saw for the first time ever the Cowboys have to travel on the road to play a Thursday game which highlighted the difficulty that comes with it for the traveling team, a luxury the Cowboys were afforded up until that point (it did not seem to matter as the Cowboys took care of the Titans on that December night).

This season, as you can see, finds the Cowboys on the road on a Thursday night as early as September to visit the New York Giants. Coincidentally it is the G-Men who Dallas will host on their second Thursday game, Thanksgiving Day.

But as noted there are also two Monday night games where the Cowboys will host both the Houston Texans and Cincinnati Bengals which brings us back to the question of how often has this happened? This being the Cowboys playing on multiple Mondays and Thursdays in the same season.

The answer is just one time. The 1978 Dallas Cowboys did it.

Pro Football Reference

Interestingly the Cowboys have only played on multiple Thursdays in a season 10 times (which again is mostly a result of recent history) and even did so three different times two years ago in 2021. A big reason for that was the opening game of the season against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers which took place on a Thursday, a detail associated with the 1978 team we are looking at here as their season began on a Monday night against the Baltimore Colts (yes, Baltimore Colts for the kids out there).

That infamous 1978 season ended with the Cowboys losing to the Pittsburgh Steelers in one of the greatest games ever played, Super Bowl XIII.

Hopefully this season has a much better end for the Cowboys.